A Glass Winter 2
By M T M
- 375 reads
The bottle didn’t make as much noise as she though it would. Sure enough it shattered on the floor into a thousand shards that would be impossible to find later, but the noise was only just enough to make everyone look up from their drinks. They all cheered, laughing as Vanessa gazed down at the mess as if it was the climax of some tragic play. Before long though the room was full of the babble of a hundred or so voices.
“Here, let me” Said Rayleen bending down with a cloth and a smile.
“No” Vanessa insisted, “Its fine just hand me the-”
“Come on now” She gives a reproving look, “This is your night Van, you don’t want to spend it picking bits of glass out of the rug. Give me that” She smiles again, “Go have fun”
Full of the energy of the night, she agrees and re-joins the party. The room thronging with people was loud and comfortable, every light was on, every hand clasped a drink. Theo was talking seriously with a group of men from his firm. Directly opposite him was a younger man, perhaps twenty, he had boyish good looks and a glint in his eye. His blue suit and tie was playful by the standards of the others, most of whom were in grey or black. His brown curls bounced happily on his head as he talked and his lips were full. Theo looked at him and thought of himself at that age, he didn’t feel much attention needed to be payed to the others in the group. What a joy to be young and full of possibilities, he didn’t see anything wrong with revelling in it, perhaps that was why he felt so drawn to the young boy with the curls. There was a lull in the conversation, Theo wasn’t paying attention. When he returned from his curious scanning of the room Nancy the housemaid was leaning over the counter trying to hear someone.
“I’ll have a white Russian” he heard the boy with the curls say. “A white Russian!” Nancy was almost lying on the counter trying to hear him.
“What on earth is a white Russian?” Theo asked. His voice was rich and deep, it carried easily across the counter. Nancy heaved a sigh of relief and signalled that she understood before scuttling away.
“You’ve never had a white Russian?” He asked incredulously, his brown curls swinging across his forehead as he turned.
“No Mathew, I haven’t” Theo spoke in a slow condescending tone that he often used with Mathew, amused by his youthful spirit, which was in a state of constant discovery. He often berated himself for it, remembering the hate he had felt for adults talking to him in that way, but Mathew didn’t seem to notice.
“Theo! You have to try it. It’s the best cocktail I’m telling you. Tell you what I’ll find her and ask for two” He smiled and pointed a handsome finger, “In fact, if you don’t like it I’ll…” He cast around, clearly looking for a prize worthy of this very important decision. There was a glimmer of something in his eyes. Some terrible, wonderful possibility.
“I’ll do your papers for a month” Then he recoiled, “A week” His face split into a wide smile and he started laughing, it erupted from deep within him, the sort of laughter that you couldn’t fake. Theo chuckled, in the restrained way he was accustomed to. But his smile as Mathew hurried away could not be tamed, he found it lingering on his lips for some time.
“Theo”
“Yes” he replied, confused, coming out of a trance.
“Korzeniowski’s latest work” asked Charles, a tall man with a jutting jaw and a cruel wife. He was clearly repeating himself, and was not pleased about it.
“Oh, yes.” Theo feigned great interest “Really wonderful, I’m constantly listening to it. Constantly…” He trails off and is saved from an awkward moment by the ambassador visiting from Spain,
“Much better than his earlier stuff” There is a mumble of agreement from the others.
Theo scans the room again, looking for Mathew. There he is, the two glasses in his hand containing a coffee coloured substance that he supposes is the white Russian. But Mathew has stopped, and is leaning against the wall holding a painting of the ‘Clouded Mountain’.
He is talking to Rayleen, Theo’s sister in law. He felt an unprecedented flush of anger against her, and then against Mathew and then against himself. A raucous bout of laughter caught his attention, he looked over to see his wife laughing with a group of young women from the gallery. She caught his eye, giving him the look that said clearly ‘Save me’. Feeling not at all reluctant he left the group and made his way over, smiling at people as he politely thrust them out of his path.
“Theo!” Vanessa exclaimed, clearly one or two more drinks in than she would normally allow herself. For the sake of ‘Safety’ as she called it.
“How are you girls doing?” He asked, taking a firm grip on Vanessa’s shoulder. They erupted into a tirade:
“Van’s just been telling us-”
“He just walked in-”
“What if I’d been there-”
“Balthamos-”
“He just turned up-”
“Oh I would’ve lost it-”
“And she sold him that-”
“-That painting-”
“I can’t believe it”
Vanessa was looking somewhat more herself, clearly regretting the extra drinks. He could read her expression as clearly as any book. She needed a moment, she was afraid that she’d say something that shouldn’t be said if allowed to stay much longer in this tornado of women.
“Vanessa? Could you help me with something?” Theo asks. The others look adoringly at their marital cohesion. She smiles and nods and comes away with him. They find solace in their bedroom and Theo makes sure to close the door behind them. She sits down calmly on the bed.
“Ok” He says, sitting next to her. They share a look and he sighs. “How long do you think?”
She frowns, which is a sign to him that she might be more like three or four drinks over her limit, she’s rarely so expressive with her face.
“Another hour maybe?” She holds his face in her hand, “How long before we can ask them all to leave?” He laughs, holding her hand on his cheek.
“I thought you wanted this” It ached to see her like this, because he knew that she was having thoughts that he couldn’t prevent. Ideas that, however false, she wouldn’t put to rest until she pulled herself out of it.
“I did” She replies reprovingly, “I do”
“What’s the list?” He asks in a tone of mocking motherhood
“Oh not really-” Perhaps she was going to say ‘not that much’ which was contradicted by the fact that she couldn’t struggle all the way to the end of a sentence.
“I had… a white wine spritzer, three shots of tequila-”
“You hate tequila” She gave him a strained look.
“I do” She says slowly. Then continues regardless
“A strawberry mojito, some whiskey, a white Russian, just the one glass of wine-”
“Wait, a white Russian?” Theo laughs “Have you been talking to Mathew by any chance?”
“Who’s Mathew?” She asks, looking positively horrified for a second, before seemingly forgetting the mention of his name. She sobbed and then regained herself in an instant, taking Theo’s head in her hands, tapping her index finger on his skull.
“Sweetheart. I know it’s hard. But you’ll get through it I know you will. For what it’s worth, I’m not worried”
“Van” Theo says slowly, pulling her hands away from his head.
“Don’t spend too much time inside your own head Theo” There’s such urgency in her voice, for the first time Theo is unsure of what to do. “It’s a maze… It’s an ocean. Swim too far out and you lose sight of the shore. Just. Endless black lapping water. No escape” She grabs his head tightly and pulls it down to her heaving chest. “Except one”
“Vanessa stop this!”
They hold each other for a time. There’s the spark between them, there always has been. But now it’s as if all the light in Vanessa is being quenched. A flame starved of oxygen. A fire sputtering and dying. Her hair felt limp and weak, her arms fell pointlessly across him. The depth had gone from her eyes, something inside her was crying out to be heard. It was hard to see at the time but Theo knew she would be alright, by the virtue of knowing someone better than you know yourself he had learnt her rhythms. Her seasons. Her little deceptions. A few days he assured himself, that’s all it will take.
~
Pristine white sheets are illuminated by the warm yellow sun; it permeates the bedroom like a heavy shroud of comfort. The window sparkles as light hits the small metal frames, sending little points of light onto the walls like stars. Theo is lying on his side, facing the window. His naked body weightless in the comfort of the moment. Vanessa lies next to him; her back warm and her face in shadow. They lie in silence and complete contentment. One of few such precious moments when the love they felt for each other was truly palpable, Theo could almost see it hanging in the air around them. Binding them together. Vanessa stares lovingly at her husband, he stares lovingly back. They are the only two people in the universe, their atoms held together only by each other. Theo runs his hand along her body, his fingers drift around her face and around her chin. They alight on her lips, on her cheek, on her hair. His other hand wanders over her chest, before finding its place on her stomach. But he is not only caressing her. Theo feels in his palm the soft but rapid heartbeat of his unborn child. Vanessa is pregnant.
She stares up at the ceiling. Out of the supporting hold of Theo’s gaze a spectre of doubt enters her mind. Inside her is another life, the possibility of another soul. He, or she, will have passions and pains and thoughts that could never enter any mind but theirs. The burden of the thing, the responsibility. Half raging joy half debilitating terror. Everything that the child could become and will become resides solely on her. The pebble of doubt grows larger; she remembers all those times when she was quite divorced from the woman she was or wanted to be. When she was so far from herself, so far from the woman that this child needed, and needed desperately.
“We should never have been married” She muttered.
“What?” Theo laughs.
“It was immature, it was a fantasy Theo. And now look where we are” She gazes down at her stomach “We were just too afraid to run away from each other, it was safe, it was all we knew how to do. What if we hadn’t been such cowards, and followed different paths. Where would we be.”
“We were in love”
“Were?” She winced. Theo sits up.
“We are in love” He holds her cheek in his hand. “I love you. Don’t you love me?”
When she was a girl she could’ve wanted nothing more than this, a beautiful man with a beautiful mind all to herself. But why then did she feel so afraid, it would always be her and Theo against the rest. But that didn’t seem like enough anymore. Something was tugging at her. A faint possibility of all the lives she could be living, all the paths she could be walking, all the choices that had led her here to this moment. Perhaps If she hadn’t settled for friendship and safety, if she hadn’t settled for him.
For all intents and purposes they had the perfect life here together, she knew that, but there was always something wrong, something terrible, lurking just out of sight. It is comparable to when one notices a strange birdlike fluttering of light, you know that it will evaporate the moment you turn to look directly at it. So you hold it there, at the periphery of your vision, for as long as possible, its fragility, its transient nature gives it some great value. She cannot turn and look at it fully, that cloud which hangs somewhere deep in her mind, just above where her enduring love lies; for Theo, and for life.
“Of course I do Theo” She assured him, cursing herself for thinking out loud. “It’s just… Hormones” She said. Employing that time-honoured tradition of blaming abnormal behaviour on the wild untameable seasons of the female body. She could see he was worried after that, for a while anyway. But the hum of life seemed to leave them few such reflective moments in the final few weeks of the pregnancy.
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I find I want to know what’s
I find I want to know what’s happening with these characters, but i’m A little confused. Is it a story being told backwards? That’s a good idea but perhaps a little more clarification at transitions would help.
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